An interesting study appeared late this week in e-marketer about how varied touch points across multiple websites can lead to increased conversion rates. It also reminded me of a great post by Jeremy Reynolds that explains the importance of understanding this. Getting to know where your customers "hang out" online is important to consider when you decide to start investing in online advertising.
For online marketers who think that the last ad impression (or click) seen is the most likely to lead to a conversion, a look at the Atlas Institute's "How Overlap Impacts Reach, Frequency and Conversions" study may be in order.
The study, conducted in the first quarter of 2007, found that US consumers were more likely to convert after viewing ads on multiple Web sites, suggesting that conversions should be attributed to a full set of impressions and/or clicks, rather than just the single one that preceded the conversion.
Two out of three consumers who eventually bought a product or took a responsive action were reached by ads across multiple portal sites before converting.
Nine in 10 consumers who converted were reached by placements other than the last ad seen. Also, 86.1% of ads which led to a responsive action were seen on multiple placements.
A previous Atlas study called "The Combined Impact of Search and Display Advertising" showed that sponsored search and display advertising together provided a 22% higher conversion rate over search alone.
Source: e-Marketer: Multiple Online Ad Placements Impress
In an
earlier post last week I outlined how to create simple and effective B2B landing pages. When I was catching up on my litany of RSS feeds over this weekend I came across this article in
Marketing Profs highlighting their
Top 5 Best (and Worst) things about landing pages.
Almost everything I had covered in my earlier post was covered here. ..except for the following observation that speaks about self directed user segmentation (see clip). This is also a great strategy if you find that your visitors are still varying widely by interests or needs.
On a side note, the article also speaks about the negative effect of landing pages on the brand. While I do believe that to some extent this is true it can be minimized by making the landing pages in high quality in both design and messaging...but I digress!
No segmentation—clicks are treated as a commodity. Not all clicks are created equal. Ad response traffic often contains a spectrum of different audience segments. They clicked on the same ad, yes, but not all for the same reason, not all with the same needs.
The one-page format of landing pages makes the same pitch to all of them, oblivious to their distinctions. If the page focuses only on one segment, it disenfranchises others; if it tries to speak to all segments at once, its passion and relevance to any one segment are watered down.
A better approach is to use a landing path where the first page induces a one-click directed behavioral segmentation choice from respondents—a branch in the path depending on the segment the respondent selects—and then you can speak with conviction and authority to each segment's specific interests on page two.
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The official Google Analytics blog makes a great point about the importance of bounce rates to your marketing efforts. They are a simple enough metric that can be applied to nearly any kind of website.
It is a metric tailored especially for landing pages...where a high bounce rate can tell you almost as much as a defined conversion funnel.
If you need a resource for understanding which metrics provide the most insight, check out the new book
Web Analytics an Hour a Day.
If your site conversion rates are low, Bounce Rate can help you understand why. If your Bounce Rates are also low, your troubles are likely due to site design and usability issues. In this case, you might focus your efforts on streamlining your conversion funnel or making your site easier to navigate. But if your Bounce Rates are high, you can focus your efforts on redesigning entrance (landing pages), improving the quality of traffic to your site, and doing a better job of pairing landing pages with ads. |
In an earlier post I commented on a cool Google Analytics widget that allowed for key web metrics to be displayed as a widget on the users desktop by the Yahoo! Widgets desktop application.
And then I ran across a neat email campaign monitoring widget for ExactTarget created by Doug Karr. In full disclosure I used to work for ExactTarget and my company is an agency client and preferred partner, so I may be biased...but I think this is a great tool!
Basically you enter a "job id" (a unique id applied to an email send) and then it updates that campaign every 15 minutes so you get near real time reporting on campaign activity. Pretty slick.
Also, There is another "Advanced Tracking" widget, but as of right now I could not get it to install properly on my computer. I do look forward to using it once they get it figured out! Once it is I will post it here.
So if your an ExactTarget client and find yourself obsessively logging in to see how your email marketing campaign in doing...this little tool may be the answer!
I’ve got the latest Web 2.0 guide "Engagement Marketing" by eMarketer and WebTrends that was just released and I'm providing it here free without cost or registration. It covers a lot of interesting data that supports the emergence of web 2.0 technologies and how they fit into the broader marketing picture.
Download the study now.
The WebTrends case study at the end is actually pretty weak compared to the rest of the document...but I guess thats to be expected since they are sponsoring it. Overall however, the document contains some solid information on the latest technology trends (social networks, podcasts, mobile media, video, digital downloading, etc.) as well as the opportunity that exists to take advantage of these trends.
And the funny one. This made me laugh out loud!
- SEOmoz: We Add Words to AdWords... Google Subtracts them.
Rand asked me for some help with AdWords content. But I really don't know how to grab someone's attention in two lines. That is, without being really crass. So it got a little PG-13 in our apartment this afternoon, what with the liberal use of words like "Viagra" and "Yo Mama" jokes
A great post today from the PPC Hero blog...as I stated in my previous post, this is a great search marketing resource.
Whether your goals are to drive sales, leads or sign-ups, increasing traffic to your site is one action you can take to get closer to your goals. Below I’ve described six ways I was able to increase traffic for my clients without spending additional money. And in turn, I was able to generate more leads and revenue for my clients.
1. Stop Ad Text Testing, Temporarily - If it’s near the end of the month, one way I increase traffic for my clients is to pause my ad text testing and only use the ad with the highest click-through rate to get maximum traffic. Then, at the beginning of the next month when goals and budgets start over, I un-pause my ad text and begin re-testing.
2. Separate Content Network - After speaking with my Google rep, she said that one way to increase traffic to your site is to turn off the content network in your sponsored search and create a new campaign where only the content network is being used. The keywords you should put in your content only campaign should be very general keywords. General keywords are more likely to be picked up by publishers versus specific keywords. She also suggests that you use the content network placement performance report to see which sites are driving the majority of traffic and which are not.
3. Add All Match Types - If you’re currently not running all match types in Google, I strongly recommend it. I have one keyword with all three match types (exact, phrase and broad) in a separate ad group in Google and all three keywords get clicks and conversions. It’s not always necessary to keep your different match types in a separate ad group, but you might find a higher click-through rate if you do. It’s something you’ll have to test on your own.
4. Keyword Tools – Keyword tools are not only important when you’re setting up new campaigns and ad groups. You should be using the keyword tool at least once a month to add new keywords to your ad groups. The more people type that go to Google and Yahoo and type in new search queries, the more new keywords will show up in the keyword tools. I recently used the keyword tool for one of my accounts that I haven’t used for a while. I managed to find tons of new keywords to add into my ad groups.
5. Site Related Keyword Tool – This is a relatively new tool for Google and I just started using it for my accounts. You type in your landing page URL and the tool will find relevant keywords according to that page. At times when I have used this tool, I have found it helpful most of the time. Even if there’s one or two keywords that the tool brings up that you didn’t think of or didn’t have in your ad group it could possibly bring a significant increase in traffic.
6. Set Daily Budgets, Lower Bids – Everyone knows that raising your keyword bids will increase site traffic. But if it’s near the end of the month and you don’t have the extra money to spend, set a daily spending limit and if you begin to hit that limit consistently, lower your bids. This will allow more traffic to come through at a cheaper cost, and in turn you’ll increase your traffic without spending additional money. Make sure you don’t lower your keyword bids too aggressively at first, or you could end up losing traffic if you go below your daily spending limit. I check my accounts at various times throughout the day to see if and when I’ve hit my spending limit. At one point I found that my account was hitting it’s spending limit at 10am. So I began to lower my bids and saw a significant increase in traffic yet didn’t go over my budget. If you don’t have a daily spending limit set up on your account set one, then gage whether or not you should need to lower your bids.
Source:
PPC Hero: 6 Ways to Increase Your PPC Traffic
I have a friend who is an extremely successful pay-per-click marketer and as he has grown out his business his team has taken to blogging on the topic of PPC. After checking out the posts for a few months I have to say that I am impressed. I have worked directly with Patrick and his company Hanapin Marketing in the past and can attest first hand to their expertise and success in the search marketing arena.
So if you are doing any paid search marketing go check out PPC Hero, it has some great tips and advice.
I was reading
Marketing Sherpa this morning and came across this interesting case study about how a simple change to your newsletter can make all the difference.
This is a great reason to start doing that email testing that you have been putting off because the results can be amazing. Every email that goes out without a split is a missed opportunity to gain insight into your recipients behavior.
SUMMARY: Sometimes even the smallest change can make a world of difference in your email design. See how one publisher transformed a related stories link into a gray utility button and immediately saw a 190% increase in clicks and traffic is up 6% on a different landing page.
It's an easy tweak that if you haven't considered, you may want to test on your own newsletters.
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Chances are good that if you do even a small amount of online marketing you have come into contact with landing pages.
Landing pages are described in Wikipedia as "a specific web page that a visitor ultimately reaches after clicking a link or advertisement". This could be anything from a search campaign in Google to a banner ad placed in a local business association. These are almost always transactional pages that exist to help fuel the customer conversion, whether it is to purchase a product, download information, or simply sign up for an email newsletter.
We place a lot of importance on these pages as they are the gateway to all customer interactivity with your company. Get it wrong and you could miss out on a lot of potential revenue. It is especially important in the B2B realm - where the value of the conversion is typically greater.
So in an effort to help you get off on the right foot I have compiled a list of tips that have served me well when creating successful B2B landing pages.
- Carry the message through from the advertisement: Do everything you can to make sure that you aren't pushing your traffic to a "one size fits all" landing page. If the ad that brought them was about a particular feature - then highlight that feature. If it was a discount that brought them to you...don't waste time talking up the feature set. It may be more work to create multiple landing pages...but you will definitely get more conversions
- Personalize the content: I've seen marketers spend hours segmenting a list and crafting a highly customized message that speaks directly to each recipient...only to forward them to a generic landing page once they decide to take action! If your email program allows for personalization of content... drive that personalization through the link in the email and into the landing page. If you want to see how you can do this through using simple javascript, see this earlier post.
- Keep the form simple and above the fold: You can test this yourself, but I have ALWAYS gotten better response when the form is above the fold. And of course, its always better to limit the amount of information to only that which is necessary. Do you really need to know the state when you have the zip code? If possible its even better if you can...
- Pre-populate the form: Want to know the easiest way to increase conversion? Pre-populate the form on the landing page. If you are driving traffic from an email campaign then you already have alot of this info...don't ask them for it again! Again, you can do this using simple javascript.
- Minimize outbound links: You spent alot of money to get the visitor to the landing page so it is perfectly acceptable to drive traffic to a landing page optimized for conversion. As long as you are giving the visitor exactly what the ad promises...you are not entitled to give them access to every page of your website. If you want to force a conversion or an exit...then that is acceptable. I will usually offer a few ancillary links if they aren't ready to take action, however...the intent is obvious and I try to do everything I can to encourage the dominant call to action.
- Optimize them for search: It makes a lot of sense to optimize each landing page for a few specific (usually long tail) keywords. Since you will be driving alot of traffic to these pages they will likely gain relevance and therefore prominence. A good way to encourage volume traffic is to link to these landing pages from your website, add them to your sitemap, andkeep them as close to the design and layout as your web site pages (while keeping in mind #5). There are too many SEO tips to cover here...I suggest reading up on any number of SEO blogs available.
- Keep the messaging to the point: The tendency is to try to do too much with the landing page copy. Its perfectly understandable since we ask so much of this page. But the fact of the matter is that this is no time to beat around the bush or push a lot of marketing fluff. Get to the point, offer real benefits, and answer those last minute questions that may be that last barrier to taking action.
- Use visual elements to peak interest: A picture is worth a thousand words. The more you can do with images (or even better...embed a presentation) the more likely you are going to pique the interest of your visitor and encourage them to take the desired action. Leave nothing to the imagination...because nobody buys that way.
- Set a testing plan in place: Don't just create the landing page and then hope that everything goes right...start testing some combinations of messages. With Google releasing Website Optimizer to the public for free you can immediately begin seeing what headlines and action calls your visitors are responding the best to.
- Monitor your results closely: I single out my landing pages for special treatment in my Google Analytics...in the form of goals and campaign tracking. This will provide a lot of opportunity to understand campaign traffic segments in relation to goal conversion. I also like to use Crazy Egg's heat map and confetti view to track specific click behavior. Mine the data...and you will be able to make key insights that help your conversion.
- Survey them: The best thing you can get from #10 is quantitative data...thousands of reports that will tell you all of the activity that has taken place...but it will not give you the "why". Why did they choose Product X over Product Y? Why did they decide to leave without converting? Why are people who come from email more likely to convert than from search? Surveying on exit or conversion can help fill in those gaps that analytics cannot.
The most important thing to consider when crafting a landing page is to never sacrifice your message for short sighted gains in SEO or web analysis. Keep your primary focus on the customer and being as thorough as possible in describing the benefits or your product and/or service. Do only those things that make sense for your customer and watch the conversions come in!
I was doing my regular surfing of my favorite website today and came across another cool article that I wanted to share...
Why not let your customers pick an email template and color theme from a set of available themes when they register/optin to your marketing campaign? It could be something similar to how blogger lets you choose a template and color theme for your blog. Your mailer program could then leverage this to send out visually personalized email. |
I am a fan of the
Customer Driven Marketing blog and it never fails that I run across some interesting ideas every time I visit. This little musing got me thinking about how we always fret over the look and feel over our email templates...and what if we just turned it over to the subscriber? And make it a part of their preference center so they can change whenever they want? Its food for thought.
If you haven't noticed, Skatterbox is undergoing some cosmetic changes...primarily intended to increase the focus on content. I decided that it would be a much better experience for my readers, because thats who I care about and why I write.
The first noticeable change has been the elimination of the sub header (with the stacked stone image) which was taking up way too much screen "real estate" and pushing a lot of content below the fold.
The second (and biggest) change was the removal of advertising. My intent was not to blog to make money...but I did want to understand it. So using my blog as a testing ground was a great learning experience and a lot of fun...but its time to devote full focus to my audience now.
So I hope that the changes make it an overall better experience for you. Over the next few days I will be expanding my blog roll to include a bigger list of sites I frequent. If you would like to be included, please let me know and we can possibly do a link exchange.
Be well!
Okay...the time has come for me to formally endorse a content management system.
I have come across ALOT of content applications in the 7 years of developing on the web. I have even built some of my own from scratch.
In my career I have used Interwoven, Hot Banana, Web Side Story, Plone, Drupal, Post Nuke, and a host of smaller PHP and .NET applications.
About three years ago I came across an open source CMS that went by the name of Mambo. While at the time I was impressed with the functionality, i was not entirely sold on the ease of implementation and the community was somewhat fractured.
So I went on about my search and settled on some smaller open source program that did "just enough to get the job done".
Fast forward to about 6 months ago where I revisited Mambo. It appeared that the community had finally split into 2 camps...the new community calling itself Joomla. I decided I would take them out for a spin.
What I learned right away was that this new Joomla application was an unbelieveable improvement with a huge community of developers and users. Mambo was improved as well - but the community seemed to be lagging while Joomla seemeed to be thriving.
If any of you have experience directly with open source applications it is no secret that they are only as good as the community supporting it. Well, Joomla is the best supported application I have ever come across. The community is rich and the list of extensions run a mile long. Chances are good that if you need it, someone has developed it.
I have developed a handful of websites using Joomla now, and have to say that I cant imagine going back. I was recently asked to do some work in Hot Banana again and it was so painful to navigate and customize. Not to mention that its written in Cold Fusion...yuck
Implementing Joomla is easy once you understand how it works... and believe me, its worth it. You need no direct knowledge of programming to install it and creating templates is fun and easy. Joomla is a simple content management system that can "extended" to make it as complex as you need it to be. Think about Firefox and all its extensions and you will get a good idea of how Joomla works.
So I highly recommend Joomla when you decide to navigate the murky road of CMS. I have used my share of them and must tell you that it is heads and tails above all open source... as well as most commercial applications. So dont spend all your money on a proprietary CMS, instead donate to Open Source Matters (the not-for-profit responsible for Joomla) download the program and benefit from the community of thousands and the hundreds of open source extensions that Joomla offers
Its no wonder Joomla was awarded the best Open Source CMS for 2006. You should check it out!
I came across an awesome article the other day and definitely wanted to share it with you.
Kelly Rusk at Card Communications has hit the "mail" on the head (okay, bad pun!) with 5 easy tips to do it right. I clipped my favorite below...but you have to check out
the full article here!
Make the most of your rental, ask for an opt-in - Make the primary call-to-action a request to subscribe. You could try to sell a product, and that may bring in X amount of dollars, but if you convert the rented names to join your own house list, you can sell to them time and time again.
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There is a great post on
Grokdotcom today about the reluctance of B2B companies to list pricing on their website. If you are competing on quality over price...maybe you shouldn't be afraid to say so.
While posting price might not be a good idea or make sense for all companies, it is worth thinking about and reconsidering. Go read the full article and see if it makes sense!
It’s usually companies that aren't competing on price who want to keep price a secret. If a company doesn’t compete on price, they're probably competing on quality; customer service or other factors. But why avoid the question? Tell the visitor what your price is and even explain that it’s higher than the competitors–just explain WHY it’s higher. If you don’t compete on price and your visitor is shopping on price, then that visitor isn't your customer. Give him what he came searching for and sell him on your unique value. If that doesn't work, don't shy away from sending him elsewhere. That level of confidence is contagious, and often results in higher conversion, anyway.
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I have built alot of Flash presentations in my lifetime and they can be really effective at getting a point across, especially if you have a complex story to tell.
The problem was that developing those presentations either in house or outsourcing it to an agency quickly costs a lot of time and money. They were "nice to have" but always fell into the ever elusive "3rd Phase" when talking about our phased online strategy. No one ever wanted to commit the resources and budget to it.
Lately I have been marketing a lot of software and putting together an effective presentation whether it is in Powerpoint or Flash has become as important as ever. An online demonstration can help prospects a great deal when they are narrowing down their selection. The more info you can show them...the better.
So thats why I was very impressed when I came across this little tool called "Wink". Its extremely simple to understand and use...and the best part is that its free!
You can get up and running almost instantly. You just download the application, fire it up, and press play. It will immediately start recording your mouse movements and you can narrate by simply talking into your microphone. When you are done, you can add descriptions, pictures, arrows, sounds, interactive buttons, and even links to urls to help you further tell your story. It makes putting together an effective presentation quick and easy!
What do you have to loose? Go try it out!
Constant Contact just released a survey component to their email marketing product, a great addition...except that its late in the game to be joining the email survey crowd.
The problem is not with the idea, but instead with Outlook 2007 and the future of email rendering. Since form elements in emails rendered in O'07 do not render, you are forced to view blank form elements in the email itself and required to view the email as a web page in order to interact with it. Email rendering rules are getting tighter...not lighter.
Don't misunderstand me on this... I am a huge evangelist when it comes to the importance of surveying and obtaining qualitative data, it is infinitely important when conducting analysis. My point is that its just as possible to integrate with a dedicated survey vendor who specializes in conducting surveys like
Survey Gizmo or
Zoomerang. It may be a better use of your money...especially with the current email rendering trends.
As a marketer I loved having surveys in emails and hope to have them back someday. But without my crystal ball I wouldn't likely select my ESP based on that.
Nice feature set...but a little too late.
I ran across this today and have to say that this is one of the funniest cartoons I have run across lately!
If you understand this comic all too well then I truly sympathize with you!
A
recent article in Marketing Sherpa points out a study done by Pivotal Voracity that concludes 53% of all email subject lines are broken and what you can do to help ensure that yours are not included in that number.
I come across this alot when I people ask me why wierd characters end up in thier subject lines. The quick and easy way to ensure that your subject lines are viewed correctly is to paste them into notepad first and then re-copy and paste it into your email program. This will remove any non-ASCII formatting. If you require special characters then you will need to brush up on encoding them correctly.
This article is a must read for any serious marketer - and even more so for the SMB out there conducting thier own email marketing. You dont want to get flagged as spam...
And while your at subject line testing
here is a cool little tool by Email Labs that will help save you alot of time. It will help you see how your from name, from email, and subject line will appear in all of the major ESP's.
If you are a big analytics fan like I am you have to run over to Grokdotcom and view Bryan Eisenberg's interview with Avinash Kaushik. Its broken down to two podcasts that you can find here (1st) and here (2nd).
I was able to finish his book over my vacation and I am greatly impressed...there is not a better book on the topic, and I have read alot of books that cover web analytics (Jim Sterne's "Web Metrics" is another great read). But this one is by far the best of its class.
So forgive me if I sound like a broken record...but you must go out and buy his book. If you want to know exactly how I feel about his book you can read my amazon review.
Great job Avinash!
I ran across
this article in Forbes.com and wanted to share it with you.
It really sums up some great tacctics that I put into use on a daily basis. If you arent doing at least 3 of these then you're not doing enough.
Make sure that you view the link at the bottom of the article that describes the article in pictures...its a great read.
I have been evaluating a cool tool provided by VivAlytics for the Yahoo widgets desktop application.
Its pretty simple to get up and running. You just download the Yahoo Widget Engine and then download the VivAlytics Google Analytics Desktop Widget ...and after customizing the application to view the reports you want regular access to - Voila! You have all of your favorite metrics available to you right from the desktop.
If you dont want to get deluged with scheduled email reports and dont want to have to login to Google Analytics every time you want to recieve your favorite metrics then this little tool may be for you.
I actually found that the Yahoo Widget Engine 4.0 to be a very cool application and have found a number of tools that I am using it for so its worth checking out on its own. There are hundreds of widgets available for it and its increasing every day.If you take VivAlytics for a test drive let us know your experiences here!
Some of you over the past month have been nice enough to politely inquire as to why I have been posting less frequently lately. The simple answer is that I got really super busy at work... and then took a much needed vacation in the Smoky Mountains. I had to hit the pressure release valve on my head before it exploded...
What I realized while I was gone was that I have a great set of dedicated readers who really care about my little blog. To those of you who were nice enough to inquire let me tell you that its you who make this all fun and worthwhile.
So I am back with a renewed sense of purpose and excited to get back to work. I had a lot of time to clear the head and with that new ideas formed... and I'm just itching to share them with you here!
So to the one faithful reader who politely ribbed me if all I was going to post about this month was book reviews...
I say no.
But I did get them finished while on vacation and will be the inspiration for many of my next posts. Book reviews are here to stay ;)
I just received my pre-ordered copy of Web Analytics: An Hour a Day by Avinash Kaushik!
I just broke it open and will be frantically reading through it for the next day or so. I have been skimming the chapters already and it looks to be an outstanding read. I know it makes more sense to post about a book after you have read it - but this is one of those occasions where I have been eagerly anticipating its arrival since I am a frequent reader of his blog posts! Between this and Email Marketing by the Numbers, I am in heaven.
If the book is half as good as his blog then we will all be very informed!
Okay, maybe this is a self serving post but it explains why I have been somewhat absent the past week and a half. We have been updating the look and feel of our website as well as adding new information. There is much more to come in the way of content and product offerings in the coming weeks and I look forward to your comments and suggestions as we continue to update it. So stop by, take a look, and let me know your thoughts!
